“I’m not buried alive anymore, I can breathe. You worry about the dirt later or not at all because breathing is most important.”
Born and raised on the Westside – Marvin Cotton Jr.’s neighborhood was the center of his universe, which, in turn, became the very place that changed the trajectory of his world.
Marvin Cotton Jr. is a man whose story compels us to question the justice system we trust. Wrongfully convicted, Cotton endured years behind bars, incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit – first-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. His fortitude, however, remained unwavering, leading to his exoneration and, ultimately, his freedom. It is a narrative that forces you to recognize the systemic issues deeply entrenched in our society.
Now, Cotton is a symbol of resilience, illuminating the path for countless others entangled in similar tragic circumstances. He’s using his newfound freedom not just to reclaim his life, but to tirelessly fight the very system that once shackled him. And so, Cotton allotted Michigan Chronicle the unique opportunity to delve deeper into his thoughts, his struggles and his aspirations.
“I’m happy to be breathing, I was just buried alive. When you’re no longer buried alive after you been buried alive, you’re not worried about the mud and the dirt on your clothes, you’re just happy you can breathe,” Cotton expressed. “I’m on this side — I’m not buried alive anymore, I can breathe. You worry about the dirt later or not at all because breathing is most important.”
Who is Marvin Cotton Jr.?
Marvin Cotton Jr. well, I’m a machine that was built by the system and where I come from and what was done to me and how I emerged from that. I think that I am a culmination of all the things that I’ve been through and how I overcame it.
2001 was a year that changed your entire life as you knew it – who were you before the conviction of first-degree murder?
I was a young kid, 21 years old when I was arrested, so, during that time I was young and enjoying life. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I guess you can say in a way that I was already in a prison because I didn’t travel too far outside of the neighborhood. I worked a little bit doing electrical work and I was in the streets – that was my life. My daughter was just born in 1998 and having my daughter did change me – it widened my view to knowing that my life was bigger than my own. I knew I had a child to take care of, but the streets were how I went about carrying that out.
You have suffered immensely at the hands of an institution that is supposed to serve justice. What did the police say were the circumstances around you being the suspect for the crime?
In 2000 I had an incident with some law enforcement where they broke into my house and I filed a complaint on the officers that were responsible for breaking into my house, and they were pretty high-ranking officers in the city of Detroit and that led to a string of harassment and unwarranted arrests and undocumented arrests where I was arrested and let go at times which led to more complaints. So, that set the scene for my wrestling with the Detroit Police Department. In 2001, a friend of mine was murdered, a friend of mine that was in the streets, and we dealt in the streets together, we hung out a lot, we even serial dated and enjoyed life together. When he was murdered the conflict between me and DPD was already there. When I was arrested, they were immediately like ‘look we’re doing whatever we have to do to make sure you go to prison.’ That was told to me during the interrogation. One of the things that the conviction integrity unit was able to secure during the investigation was a recording of Investigator Hughes talking to a private investigator that I hired. He was unaware that the private investigator was working for me. The private investigator approached him and said, ‘I work for the prosecutor’s office and this guy Marvin Cotton is trying to get out of prison and we’re trying to make sure that doesn’t happen, what can you tell me?’ Hughes talked because he had a relationship with my investigator from the past, they worked together, he was a Detroit police officer as well. So, he talked pretty openly, and he said, ‘Listen we didn’t have nothing, so we had to do what we had to do.’ He also disclosed more information that was never turned over, so, that’s newly discovered evidence and it’s a Brady violation as well. So, when the conviction integrity unit overturned my case there were like 13 Brady violations connected to why they decided to overturn, vacate and dismiss my case.
At the time you were incarcerated, did you have a chance to talk with the victim’s family? What about after?
No. You see, the thing about criminal cases, when someone is charged the family takes the position that the prosecutor and law enforcement takes. When they point at someone and say, ‘We have the right person,’ it’s something about that, that no matter what comes out later that initial impression is burnt in with fire – that initial impression never changes, no matter what.
What are your thoughts towards the person who did commit the crime?
I feel sorry for everyone involved even those that intentionally lied or did things to make sure that they got a conviction on the wrong person – I literally feel sorry for them. I don’t even talk about the people that were involved in the case unless I’m telling my story. I feel sorry for Kenneth Lockhart who was one of the witnesses involved in the case; I feel sorry because I know that he was coerced. I know that it was things that they used to pull the weakness out of him and other people. So, I feel sorry for that, but I had to grow to that point. Of course, I was angry in the beginning; of course I was bitter, but I had to work all of that out of my system in order to see my way out of prison. A lot of the work that I do in the community now is to stand in between violence. From people becoming victims and people becoming predators in that way. So, being involved in that work now I really have a different perspective of the person or people that were responsible for committing this crime. You know, I know that people don’t do things like this unless they’re hurting. You know, people say all the time hurt people hurt people. Sometimes it loses meaning because it says so much. But I know that that’s true.
Now that you have been on the receiving end of this paradigm, how do you perceive the concept of “prison as punishment?”
The prison system in the way that it is set up should most certainly be abolished — in the way that it’s set up it. I don’t believe that there should be no prisons, but the way that it’s set up is not set up for rehabilitation. It’s not set up for care. It’s not set up to make people better. It is set up to be a punishment. Society hasn’t grown to the point where it cares enough because, you know, when bad people do bad things, people want them to be punished and that’s understandable because it’s usually coming from a point of pain. We hurt, we seen what you’ve done, and we want you to pay for it. You know, so I understand where it comes from. But you lock someone in prison and that environment is not set up to help people when they come out. You know, you’re still dealing with somebody now that was hurting before they went in and now the prison environment is so traumatic and so volatile, that it’s not guaranteed that an anomaly will come out. You know, every now and then you have, you know, gifts that come out of prison and really serve the community but for the most part, prison is set up to kind of be a graveyard and when people come up with that type of thinking leads to the reason recidivism is so high because prison is not set up right. So, if most people that go into prison are going to come out then prison should be a classroom and prison should be an environment where people can get help going all the way back to all of the traumas in their life in order to help grow them out of that, whether they’re scheduled to be released or not. I was not scheduled to be released. You know, I was convicted of first-degree murder felony firearm which carries a natural life sentence without the possibility of parole like the parole board sees you but you don’t have a possibility of parole, they just see you out of routine. But I took the time in order to invest in myself and read and study and engage in conversations and with people that that will help me grow, but if you don’t do that yourself, the system is not set up to give that to you. You know, they don’t even require people to have a GED anymore. It used to be a requirement. You couldn’t even get parole without it. Now that’s not even a requirement. You know, they took college out of the system. And now we’re starting to come back in through programs with, you know, just people that really care enough to try to get those programs back in there, but you had correctional officers that will complain about prisoners getting better education than them. Well, if they’re at this very low point in life, and sometimes they need to have a better education than you. You know, so I think society really has to change this perspective and view about what people need to get everybody on an even playing field. I don’t think a segment of society should have more access to the best or to the best resources. I think everybody should have equal access and just because somebody’s in that low place in their life in prison, I believe they should still have access to become the best human being they can so they can fulfill the purpose and really strive for something that society not only could be proud of but [could] benefit from.
Mr. Cotton, your story is a testimony of resilience and resistance. Can you talk about how your wrongful conviction and subsequent release have shaped your understanding of the penal system and its deep connection with racial and class injustices?
You know, believe it or not, you would think that once anyone goes to prison, that’s like the bottom of the barrel. You know, it’s not even considered to be a part of society. But you still have racism and classism in prison. Imagine that. The people that’s targeted the most, and harassed by correctional officers are young Black men. They harass the younger ones, more than they harass older ones. And it’s obvious they show favoritism; there’s favoritism over races, you know, where officers will treat a white inmate better than they would treat a Black inmate or if there’s some sort of need that arise the white inmate is most likely to get that need fulfilled than a Black inmate. Now, I’m not saying that this is good for anyone because no one usually gets the things that they need, according to policy, according to the Constitution in prison, period. But even in that environment, you have Blacks that are at the bottom of the barrel of that. And it’s obvious there’s religious discrimination that goes on in prison. There’s no real oversight, and anybody that’s in that environment that’s responsible for supervising and oversight by them being so intimately connected to the system, it’s like a kangaroo court. It’s like a mockery. You almost have to sue for everything, like medical. There’s][ been times where I needed to go to the medical healthcare and receive some sort of antibiotics or some sort of treatment and didn’t receive it. They like hey, you got to buy Tylenol off the store, but like, whatever I’m going through Tylenol, it’s not going to do it. So, you have people in there that have died, that suffered because they can’t get treatment. And if I can’t trust you to treat my health right, how is this an environment where you’re going to help me grow, or help me to become better than I was when I had contact with the system?
You’ve spent one year shy of two decades serving time in a place where your time didn’t serve anyone but the injustices of the system. You were 21 when you went in and spent that same amount of time behind bars. Did 20 years really feel like 20 years?
19 years, seven months, 12 days. That’s including the county jail. County Jail time is very slow. In your first contact with your normal life being disrupted, upset, and that time is very slow. The county jail is designed to break you. This is because people that’s in the county jail are fighting cases, planning to go to trial. So, the county jail is set up to make you not go to trial and to plead out or whatever is designed to break you even to the pale paint on the wall and the dirt. I went back to the county jail in 2017 for a hearing and it looks like it had not been cleaned a single time in all of those years. It’s designed to break you. It’s cold, you can feel the moisture in the air. The way that everything is run, the slowness of them taking you from the cell that you’re in to take you to another cell to strip search you, to going downstairs to get ready for court and they start searching — it is slow. When people see a defendant walk into the courtroom that may be nine o’clock, that person been up since for 3:00 a.m. or 4. They get you up about that time to get ready for court. Then they start running you through all of these different cycles. So, by the time that defendant walks into the courtroom, they’re tired, they’re worn out, they’re beat down. And, if you have a trial, you know, every day you go into court, you go through that every day. And then when you go back up, you have to go through the same process. So, it takes you four or five hours to make it to court, and it takes you four or five hours after everybody leaves. Five o’clock comes they close the courtroom; you may make it back up to your cell at 10 o’clock to be woke back up at three o’clock. And so, when you see people pleading out the cases it’s not always because they’re guilty or because the charges that they have on them are accurate. They are just trying to get it over with. County jails are set up specifically to do that. So that time goes very slowly. With prison, my first several years were very hard and painful. You know, coming to terms with the fact that I’m missing so much in my daughter’s life. I’m not seeing her first anything. You know, that first year of being off the streets, I was in a county jail, maybe nine or 10 months, but that first year I lost maybe 95 percent of the people that I was in contact with because who wants to stand on the side of you when it’s the People of the State of Michigan versus you. So, most people don’t know how to support you. They don’t know how to help you or make you feel better or anything, so, it’s easier for them to just not answer your calls or to develop a new routine of blocking you out. And you know I’m not mad at any of the people that weren’t able to just be there. Because I know it’s a difficult, unnatural situation. But you lose so much, and you don’t want to lose anything. Even when you know you’re not supposed to lose anything. It’s even harder.
In the perspective of mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally…where are you today? What does redemption look like for you?
I think I’m at my best, you know, spiritually and emotionally. I think I was in better shape a few years ago. I’ve been eating like crazy since I’ve been out and kind of lost my eight pack but I’m working on it and working to get it back. And I’m in pretty good shape physically, definitely in better shape than I was before I went into prison. I spent years working out in there and there’s something about that, that kind of makes it hard to really fall off into a really rigid routine now because that’s what I did in order to just give myself the mental and emotional spiritual balance in there. Just beat my body down so that I can sleep and beat my body down so that I can kind of keep the negativity off. So, I think because I did so much in there, it’s kind of hard to really do it so much now. What does redemption look like to me? Redemption for me, is not about me. You know, when cars get into accidents and the same car is exhibiting the same problem and they get into accidents, sometimes the car’s repairable but it’s never really the same. But sometimes it’s repairable and sometimes it’s not. But at a certain point, the manufacturer or the company looks at the design to say what are we doing wrong? And then they go to work on the system to produce better cars. You know what happened to me, although it wasn’t an accident, it was definitely impactful. You know, I went through a process of, you know, repairing myself and get myself in enough working order to be back on the road, but I’m more interested in the system producing better products. You know, better police departments, better prosecutor offices. You know, just a higher judicial standard. You know, redemption for me looks like what happened to me not happening to someone else. And I know what’s happening every day in America, I know what’s happening. And, that right there is what keeps me working. Redemption for me is not someone giving me anything to make me feel better. I think is more about the collective really accepting a higher degree of obligation to say we gotta fix this.